Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if a goalkeeper’s landing, when using a taught diving technique, created a softer landing than a landing performed just on the side of the body. Often a goalkeeper’s specific skills, such as diving, are over looked when conducting research, so literature was limited. To create a more game-like dive landing, techniques taught by most coaches were used. This landing involved having the ball and forearm land first compared to just landing on the side of the body. A soccer ball was thrown away from the subject so that they would have to perform a dive, and then applied both landing techniques onto force platforms. The peak ground reaction forces (GRF) were 3185.1 N when landing on the side of the body first and 4364.7 N when landing on the ball and forearm first. Impulse was also calculated at 334306.7 N and 263456.6 N respectively. Higher peak GRF during the ball and forearm landing could be attributed to the smaller surface area the GRF has to act on. An interesting finding was that during the side of the body landing, another spike in GRF occurred. It was thought that it could be possible that the subject’s body rebounded up some and hit the force platform again. It would have been best if video analysis had been used in tandem with the force platforms to see the subject’s body actions during the landing.

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About the Author:

Former Celtic Bryanne “Bry” Bellovary majors in Sports Science at Northern Michigan and will graduate this May.  Bry played six years for the Celtic and four years at Canton HS before going on and playing for Northern Michigan Club team.  She plans on going to Graduate School for a Masters emphasizing in Exercise Physiology and has been accepted to the 59th ACSM Annual Meeting and 3rd World Congress on Exercise is Medicine in San Francisco.  Look for more soccer related research coming in the future!